Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/47/)
I was planning to ride off into the sunset today, but if I may appropriate an observation by Benjamin Franklin, it looks as though I might be heading in the direction of the rising sun.
In the week since I announced that Last Best News would cease publication today, I have heard so many expressions of interest in reviving it in some shape or form, with or without my continued involvement, that it appears likely that this independent online newspaper will live on.
U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., has a history of making dubious claims. Perhaps none was more dubious than his response to the Las Vegas massacre: “History shows us that more gun laws do not make our society safer.” Continue Reading →
Back in the 1970s, when Steve Daines was on a family trip to Disneyland, a woman asked him about life back home. Her impression of Montana was stereotypical at best — a third-world state far removed from economic prosperity.
Kicking off the Montana High Tech Jobs Summit on Monday, Daines, now a U.S. senator representing the state, said times have changed. Technology has removed the barriers of geography, and Montana’s booming tech sector competes at the enterprise level with the world’s top firms. Continue Reading →
In a race against winter they’re determined not to lose, 10 workers are camped in Glacier National Park’s backcountry, rushing to stabilize the burned-out shell of Sperry Chalet before it is buried beneath the snow.
The work is privately funded through donations to the Glacier National Park Conservancy’s Sperry Action Fund, created the day after a wildfire overran the 103-year-old chalet on Aug. 31. Continue Reading →
On my first visit to Philadelphia last week, I was overwhelmed by history.
I gawked at the Liberty Bell, stood in the hall where the founders created the Constitution, admired the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and even stumbled upon a little Jewish cemetery where the honored dead included the man whose ship brought the Liberty Bell to America. Continue Reading →
PHILADELPHIA — Though it’s doubtful many people here know it, key components of a major public arts project in Philadelphia were made in Montana.
The project, “Fireflies,” by the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, consists of hundreds of handmade Chinese lanterns on display aboard a fleet of pedicabs that have been plying the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Parkway since mid-September. Continue Reading →
Autumn ArtWalk in downtown Billings, set for Friday from 5 to 9, “embraces cool art, cool nights and cool music.”
That’s according to a press release from the Downtown Billings Alliance, which also announced that tickets for ArtWalk’s first 50/50 raffle are on sale through the Winter ArtWalk, scheduled for Dec. 1. Continue Reading →
Six years ago, during a walk along the Yellowstone River, I caught a glimpse of something I had never seen before. It was obviously a turtle, but with a shell unlike any I had ever seen before — a shell that looked like a pancake.
One second this beautiful creature was there, sunning itself on a muddy beach, and then the next all I saw were ripples where it slid into the water to escape me. I found out later it was a spiny softshell turtle – a shy, elusive reptile that is found in the river systems of southeast Montana and about which wildlife biologists know little. Continue Reading →
A massive agri-business commercial food park that will eventually employ an estimated 3,000 people is planned for Cascade County near Great Falls.
Friesen Foods LLC has submitted an application for a special use permit, which essentially kick starts the development process in the county, said Brian Clifton, public works director for Cascade County. Continue Reading →
Trying to understand America, I found myself in a prison cell in Czechoslovakia in 1978. Continue Reading →
“For every complex problem there is a simple solution … which is wrong.”
I learned long ago that there are as many expert opinions about an issue as there are people thinking about it. Every year, or every bad fire year, there are numerous opinions regarding what should be done to minimize the economic costs of fire, from loss of timber to loss of homes. Continue Reading →
